Re: [PATCH] AT91: add AT91SAM9X5 dummy configuration variable

[Nicolas Ferre]

Le 02/07/2011 11:49, Arnd Bergmann :
> On Wednesday 29 June 2011 17:24:42 Nicolas Ferre wrote:
>>> Here are a few questions:
>>> i) The drivers you're willing to send, are those for Atmel's IPs or are
>>>       the IPs sourced from some other company ?
>>> ii) Even if they are Atmel-specific, do you see the possibility of Atmel
>>>       licensing them ?
>>> iii) Does your driver current depend on asm/ or mach/ headers ?
>>> iv) Is there a generic header which you could use instead of asm/ mach/ ?
>>
>> I just want to hide drivers that are not relevant for others: I have the feeling
>> that it is a good practice. This tiny patch will ease this during my publication
>> flow. Do you seriously care?
> 
> I think Felipe is right on this one, but both views are common in the kernel
> today: Some people want dependencies to mean "you cannot build this driver
> unless the dependencies are fulfilled", others like them more broadly to
> mean "there is no point to ever enable this driver because I know you won't
> need it".
> 
> Both views are understandable, but I favor the first one because
> 
> * it's the more common view these days and we should be consistent
> 
> * it exposes drivers to more build testing. If something changes in
>   the kernel that exposes new warnings in your driver or causes a
>   build error, that is more likely to get fixed when more people
>   find it by doing allyesconfig or randconfig builds.
> 
> * If there is an actual build dependency between the driver and the
>   platform that causes you to need the explicit Kconfig depends, that
>   is in many cases a hint that the driver author is doing something
>   wrong, like hardcoding MMIO addresses or referencing custom
>   symbols exported by the platform.
> 
> I don't think anyone really objects your patch to introduce the extra
> Kconfig symbol, but I'd hope that we can eventually get a consensus
> on the idea that you shouldn't use Kconfig dependencies based on
> whether a driver is relevant or not.

Arnd, Felipe,

You have convinced me.
But I will have to remove the other dependencies that I mentioned before
in the thread.

We can drop this patch.

Bye,
-- 
Nicolas Ferre

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